🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May16.134106.24421@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> quale@saavik.cs.wisc.edu (Douglas E. Quale) writes:
   The point is, I don't care what numeric type i is.  In a dynamically typed
   language this type error would not occur.  In dynamically typed languages
   a lot of things that can be type errors in static languages simply *cannot*
   cause errors.  I think much of the belief in the extra safety of statically
   typed languages is based on experience with C, where uncaught type errors
   are a common and serious problem.  C is a terrible example that gives all
   of the disadvantages of static typing with very little safety in return.

   -- Doug Quale
   quale@saavik.cs.wisc.edu


I agree with that, but as was pointed out to me previously, when we think we 
are debating static vs. dynamic typing, we sometimes are actually debating
abstract types vs. machine types.  I think that a lot of type errors come when
types that are conceptually very similar to a human are not at all the same to
the machine.  

I make an order of magnitude more type errors in Common Lisp when I insert 
type declarations for optimizing purposes.  All of a sudden the difference 
between int and float and whatever becomes very important, and it *is* hard 
to keep it all straight without help from the compiler.

--
-- Steve Olson
-- MIT Lincoln Laboratory
-- olson@juliet.ll.mit.edu
--